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A cool wind snakes through the craggy steppes of Duscur from the north, warning that summer’s end is near. Dedue stops, leans against the stone wall he’s been stacking; lets the breeze dry the sweat from his face. He should be grateful for summer’s end. Soon, the long-scorched fields will offer up their first harvest of the new era, and the villagers will get to enjoy the fruits of their labor properly—the land they’ve all helped to rebuild. It will seal in everything they’ve been working toward. Their bond to their reclaimed land, and to one another.
So why does his heart ache still?
Gruta, the aging priest of the god of tides, gently eases the trowel from Dedue’s hand. “I think you’ve done enough for the morning, Councilor,” he says. “Maybe you should rest.”
Dedue opens his mouth to argue, but there’s no use. It’s true. For months now he’s been toiling ceaselessly to help rebuild his old village. The docks and port are running again, bringing in bounties of fish on the salty breeze; the looms are running once more and the sheep lowing along the craggy steppes. By and large, it has been Duscur hands who rebuilt the peninsula, though they weren’t too proud to accept financial support from the Kingdom. Certainly not when those funds came directly from Viscount Kleiman’s holdings, once he was stripped of his title and, later, his head for his role in fomenting the Tragedy of Duscur in the first place.
But there are others who’ve offered their aid, and Dedue and the Duscur Renewal Council members were too happy to accept. As he wanders across the village square, he spots the schoolchildren milling around the hall of knowledge, where Mercedes von Martritz and her wife Annette have helped establish a new educational program. After the old Kingdom had starved Duscur for access to technological discoveries and more for so long, it’s astonishing to see how quickly progress is spreading across the peninsula again. Duscur once led the world in mathematical and astronomical discoveries, but that past had been smothered down long ago. Dedue smiles as two schoolchildren tear past him, clutching sorcery tomes to their chests. It is a relief to see them blooming once more.
Near the village center, a small shrine of gratitude has been constructed, nestled against the cliffside. Still self-conscious despite everything, he kneels before it, and adds a single stone to the stack as he offers the thanks he cannot give out loud. As long as it lives only in his head, then it can’t overwhelm him. Shatter him.
He's nearly to the village docks that curl around the rocky bay when he hears someone calling his name.
“Councilor Molinaro?”
Dedue winces. He’d hoped to slip through this day unnoticed. But as he turns, he spies Mercedes and Annette rushing toward him, Mercedes carrying a basket laden with a wrapped bundle.
“You needn’t be so formal with me,” he tells her as they approach. “I think you’ve tended my wounds too many times for that.”
“I know. But you’ve earned your title.” Mercedes giggles softly. “And the look on your face is always worth it.”
Annette grips her wife by the shoulders, bouncing on her toes to lean up. “And did you really think we were gonna forget that it’s your birthday?”
Dedue’s stomach sinks. He’d been hoping for just that, in fact. While he appreciates the trust the villagers have placed in them to help manage the transition—even if, after so long away, he doesn’t feel he’s earned it—the last thing he wants is for his birthday to become an . . . event. Duscur’s rebirth should be about so much more than him, but if word gets around, that’s exactly what will happen.
“I’d rather focus on the work before us.”
“Yeah, Mercie said you’d say that. Don’t worry, we’ll keep it quiet.” Annette eases the basket out of her wife’s hands. “But she worked really hard to get these kaveer cakes right, so you’d better try them.”
The sharp, spicy-sweet scent reaches him as Annette starts to unwrap the basket, and his stomach growls in spite of himself. “You—you made kaveer cakes?” And swallowing, disbelieving, “For me?”
“I had to fudge a little on the spices because cardamom’s still in short supply. But I hope you’ll like them anyway.” Mercedes gestures toward a stone outcropping overlooking the bay. “Would you like to sit?”
Unable to say much else, Dedue nods and sits with them.
She was right about the ratios, but he couldn’t care less. The moist cake warms his mouth, sweetness sparkling against spice, the taste and smell transporting him to another life. The smell of baking kaveer cakes is indistinguishable from the scent of smelting iron on his parents’ forge; from the hearty laugh his mother made as she slapped a batch of dough onto the stone countertop. He’d never even attempted to recreate them, all the time he lived in Faerghus, or at Garreg Mach; he’d feared that failing at it would only twist the old dagger still lodged in his heart, remind him of everything he’d lost and thought he’d never have again.
But he was here; he was alive; Duscur endured. The sea and the stone and the sky looked back at him, unchanged, a constancy he didn’t know he’d craved.
“Thank you,” he manages, and he doesn’t bother to try to stop the tear from sliding down his cheek. “They’re . . . perfect.”
“Told you,” Annette chides her wife, who blushes furiously; and the three of them chew in companionable silence as the herons cry out and circle the distant fishing boats that dot the horizon.
They have been through so much together. They no longer have need for words. Their language is one of shared silence, balancing the weight of their thoughts amongst themselves, and it is enough to ease Dedue’s mind.
“Soooooo,” Annette drawls, after eating two more cakes. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from—”
“Annie!” Mercedes cries, and thwacks her on the arm. “We talked about this—”
“Hey, it’s a fair question!” Annette turns toward Dedue, eyes bright. “Besides, he’s still king here, at least for another month, depending how the referendum goes.”
Dedue feels his ribs knitting together, so tight he can’t breathe. The last bite of kaveer had turned stony in his mouth and he forces himself to swallow it down. “I . . . I have not.”
Mercedes makes a pitiful noise in the back of her throat, and Dedue wishes very much, suddenly, that he could go jump off the cliffs.
“When he . . . when I . . . accepted this posting,” Dedue says, turning each word over carefully, as if looking for snakes beneath them. “His Majesty said it was better that he not visit too frequently. Something about fearing it might undermine my authority.” Dedue scratches at the old scar on his chin, as if he can feel the venom from the blade that left it festers on beneath the surface. “I told him that was unnecessary, that the people of Duscur were perfectly capable of casting their votes in the referendum without taking his and my . . . bond . . . into consideration. But you know His Majesty.” Dedue grimaces. “He has his convictions.”
“He’s a stubborn pain in the ass, you mean,” Annette says, earning another swat from Mercedes. This time, she catches Mercedes’s arm, and wraps it in her own. “What? It’s true.”
Dedue’s brow crinkles. “He has no need to visit me. He—I—” Gods, he thought this would get easier as the months passed, but the ache in his heart at Dimitri’s absence still burns like acid, still hits him like a blow every time. “He agreed that I had more than fulfilled the oath I’d sworn to him once, and that if I did not wish it, he would ask nothing more of me, would not beg me to stay.”
“If you didn’t wish it, huh?” Annette snorts.
Dedue blinks at her.
“Oh, Councilor,” Mercedes says, tilting her head with a wry little smile. “You are so smart and brave. And yet not very bright sometimes.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. But we love you anyway.” Mercedes gives him a quick peck on the shoulder before she stands. “His Majesty would give you anything you asked. He just needs you to do the asking.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think?” Another secret smile, then she and Annette both stand, shaking the kaveer cake crumbs from their gowns. “I suppose we’d better get back.”
“Yeah! This afternoon, we’re working on fire spells!” Annette squeals.
Mercedes steers her by the shoulder. “The theory of them. Not the application.”
“Well, to begin with, maybe . . .”
“Happy birthday, Dedue.” Mercedes holds his gaze for a moment longer. “I hope your gods grant you courage to ask for what you need.”
Dedue frowns. He’s never been shy about asking his gods for guidance or anything else. For long, anguished years, he prayed every night to the god of healing to tend to him, just this once, so that he might rejoin the fight with His Majesty once more. But he suspects that isn’t what she’s talking about—and it aches too much to imagine what she really means.
Dedue’s cottage is built into the hillside over the village on a rocky escarpment, granting him a view of the sea to the west and the village and mountains beyond to the southeast. The first few months he was here, he’d catch himself watching twilight spread from out of those southern mountains; watching for signs of movement at the pass, for riders approaching from the south. He was merely being watchful for threats, he’d tell himself; he was not hoping against hope . . .
But as he picks his way through the wild, splendid gardens of his front yard, he glances over his shoulder toward the mountains again. The pass is empty.
His housekeeper, Ruri, greets him at the door. He’d fought against hiring a housekeeper, but with so much time spent out in the village, it really had become necessary, and besides, Ruri had needed the work. She’s wrapping her curls up in a scarf as she prepares to head out for the night, bangles tinkling softly against her arm as she moves. “Took you long enough, Councilor.” She jerks her head in the direction of the seaside terrace at the cottage’s end. “You’ve got a visitor waiting for you.”
Dedue’s fist squeezes around the door handle. “But I’m not—”
“Would you like me to make up the spare room for him before I head out?” Ruri asks.
Him. Dedue’s skin prickles as though he’s plunged into a frigid spring. “I don’t—I’m not sure—”
“Well, if you need me, I’ll be at the kaffe for the evening. Just in case.” She winks. “Good luck, Councilor.”
Dedue scans the stone cottage’s interior, unable to move. Nothing and everything looks different—the bright colors of the woven wall coverings alternate between seeming too loud and too muted with each frantic thud of his heart. The air is cold with impending autumn but warm with sun-baked stone. Hanging from the hook by the door is a single shaggy cloak.
He grips it between his fingers, feeling the material. Staring at it long enough to convince himself it isn’t a brilliant shade of blue. Just a dusty traveling cloak, made of soft leather-lined with wool. It could be anyone’s.
It could be anyone’s.
He sheds his own work boots next to the guest’s pair of mud-creased riding boots—too stiff and too new for him to recognize—and turns toward the terrace. Taps his hand to the metal sigil for the god of hospitality where it’s nailed beside the doorframe, though he suspects it is another god he really wants. Then, shoulders drawn back, chin raised as much as he can manage, he makes his way out the terrace door.
His Majesty King Dimitri I of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus stands at the balcony, back to Dedue, staring out at the sunset as distant waves ripple against it. Dedue sucks in his breath, audibly enough that it makes Dimitri turn, blue eye finding him from beneath freshly washed golden locks that hang damp against his cheek. Dedue realizes too late that he’s been staring for several seconds, forgetting to breathe, forgetting every language he’s ever learned; he hurriedly drops to one knee and bows his head, staring at the mosaic terrace flooring as he tries to regain control of himself.
“Y-your Majesty.”
“Councilor,” Dimitri answers, his voice a little airy. “Now may we please dispense with the formalities? If I wanted people bowing and scraping to me, I needn’t have left Fhirdiad.”
“Yes. Of course. Dimitri.” Dedue climbs back to his feet, steadying himself against the balcony railing, and suddenly they are much too close. With an anxious gulp, he takes a step back, and Dimitri’s gaze falls away. “I—I merely assumed that you must be here on official . . .”
“No. Certainly not.” Dimitri frowns. “Let’s just say I’d like to keep this journey off the record.”
Dedue glances around with sudden panic. “Dimitri—where are your guards, your retinue—there wasn’t anyone—”
“There’s a handful of agents of the crown at the tavern down the road,” Dimitri says, with a distasteful twist to his lips. “I knew you’d worry otherwise. But please don’t force me to make an official visit out of this. I don’t want to give any impression that I’m trying to meddle in the upcoming referendum, or undermine your . . .” Dimitri’s voice quavers. “Your authority. I come to you as . . . as a friend.”
Friend. The word tastes both bitter and honeyed at the same time. Dedue nods, because what more can he do? “I understand.”
They look at each other a minute longer, and the more time passes, the more Dedue feels a restlessness in his limbs. He wants to reach out to Dimitri. Embrace him. Feel him, his solidness. Remind himself that he’s real. As his vassal, it had been all too easy to find a reason to touch him: tending to his wounds and pulling the disheveled hair from his face; aiding with his armor; staying close to him, no matter what. As equals, though, he feels more distance between them than ever.
The months have been kind to him. He’s dressed simply, in a soft, creamy linen tunic and buttery leather breeches. The brown leather eyepatch he wears today is subtler, blending into his sun-kissed features better than the black he wore during the war. But he is thinner than ever; some of the muscle that clung to him in wartime has atrophied, and Dedue feels a sharp pang in his chest as he wonders that no one is sparring with him, or reminding him to eat enough at every meal. Dark shadows still lurk beneath his eye.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” Dimitri says, head drooping.
Dedue frowns. “For what?”
“I promised you that I would I stay away. But I—your birthday was coming, and I couldn’t bear the thought of no one—”
“Mercedes and Annette,” Dedue says quickly, as though proving Dimitri wrong will take that sadness out of his tone. “They made me kaveer cakes.”
Dimitri laughs faintly, head rising once more. “Of course they did.”
“But I didn’t wish for anyone else to know. I didn’t want it to cause a distraction.”
“No. You wouldn’t.” Dimitri’s eye dazzles in the sunlight as his lips part. Gods, Dedue can’t not look at those lips. He’d traced them in his mind so many nights since he left Fhirdiad, until he began to fear he might forget the shape of them, thin and elegant and so much colder than they deserved to be. Clearing his throat, Dimitri turns away and gestures toward the low stone table behind them.
“I wanted to give you this. It’s the least I could do.” He nods toward a long item wrapped in brilliant blue velvet on the table. “I’ll be back on the road first thing tomorrow if you wish it—I can stay at the tavern tonight—but I wanted you to have this too much. If you can forgive me for bringing it myself . . .”
Dedue glances uncertainly at the package, then back at Dimitri.
“Please,” Dimitri adds.
Dedue’s fingers skim over the velvet, impossibly supple even under his callused fingertips. Carefully, he peels away the wrapping. And stares.
At first he flinches, instinct urging him to run. It’s an axe. A weapon of war. Not unlike one he wielded countless times in Dimitri’s name, but those days are no more—never can be again. And yet—
The symbol pressed into the axe head where it joins the hilt gives him pause.
“We found this among Viscount Kleiman’s possessions,” Dimitri says, coming up behind him. “That mark . . . it was the mark of your parents’ forge, was it not?”
Dedue tries to say yes, but his mouth is too thick, as though he’s choking on fumes.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of it residing anywhere else. I had to bring it here.”
He’d thought everything was gone—gone in the hateful fires the soldiers set, the hammering of cavalry hooves. Buried under rubble far too heavy to unearth.
“Thank you,” Dedue manages. “I—thank you. I have no words—”
“You don’t owe me any. Truly.”
The hitch in Dimitri’s voice pulls taut at Dedue’s heart.
He turns to find Dimitri’s eye glistening as the king backs against the terrace railing. Framed in twilight, his hair takes on a saintly cast, molten orange and gleaming even as his face is thrown in shadow. Dedue steps toward him, too emboldened by their months apart to care, stopping only as Dimitri’s shoulders draw up to their ears.
“I’m sorry,” Dimitri whispers. “Goddess, I’m sorry. I promised I’d stay away, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Tell me to leave and I’ll never come back, I swear it, but it had been so long and I—I had to know—”
Dedue stares at him. Mercedes’s and Annette’s words had been gnawing at him all afternoon, chewing a too-sharp and hopeful path within him. He was reading too much into Dimitri’s words. Wanting too much to see the truth he longed for.
“I never asked you to stay away,” Dedue finally says, though, because if Mercedes and Annette were even a little correct—
“No. You didn’t.” Dimitri opens his eye. “But you also never asked me to stay.”
Dedue’s pulse is cannonfire in his ears. Another step brings them face to face. Below Dimitri is the terraced garden full of blooms Dedue brought back from the kingdom’s greenhouse, brilliant violets and teals and reds, every last one of them reminding him of Dimitri and his second home. And beyond that, the sea, the one that joins the Duscur peninsula to Fhirdiad, keeping them apart these long months even as it links them.
And before him, trembling, remorseful, is the man he loves. The man he has loved since he fully grasped the meaning of the word; the man he’s drawn breath for even in his darkest times, when he refused to breathe for himself. They clawed their way out of their graves for one another, again and again, and yet Dedue had never known—could never have known, given their previous bond—if there was even a chance he meant to Dimitri what Dimitri meant to him.
And yet Dimitri gave him everything. He gave him proof that his oath had been fulfilled—that Dedue’s life was solely his own once more. He gave him everything he needed to see Duscur reborn, understanding it was not something he himself could do if it was really to mean what the people of Duscur needed it to mean. And he gave Dedue the space to walk away. From him. From their bond.
Dedue had not even dared to hope his real reason in doing the last.
“Dima,” Dedue says, and Dimitri makes the softest sigh, “I have never quite known how to ask for things for myself.”
Dimitri raises one hand, close to Dedue’s cheek, a question in the tilt of his head—a request for permission that Dedue grants with a nod. Dimitri’s knuckles, the backs of his fingers, run over Dedue’s cheek and Dedue leans into them, eyes closed, until there is nothing but skin and skin.
“But if you did?” Dimitri asks, voice so low it’s merely something Dedue feels humming in his chest.
Dedue steels himself. Turns his head until his lips skate over that ridge of knuckles. He kisses them, so delicately, reverently that he wants to weep.
“I would ask that we could share our lives once more. As equals, this time.”
Dimitri laughs, quick, harsh, hand trembling against Dedue’s mouth. “I—I thought you knew,” he says, off Dedue’s quizzical look. “That was always yours to claim.”
There are a thousand things Dedue wants to say to that—most of them involving calling Dimitri the biggest fool in the land—but in the end, he settles for kissing him instead.
Dimitri lets out a soft cry against Dedue’s lips as they meet, and leans up and into the taller man’s kiss. Dedue wraps his arms around him to hold them together. He can’t let go—he can’t let go of him again. His right hand works through Dimitri’s silky locks as his left traces a slow circle along Dimitri’s spine, and he is pushing Dimitri’s mouth open, and Dimitri is teasing into his lips, and it tastes sweeter than any memory, and kevaar cake, any Duscur flower in full bloom.
“Gods and goddess, I love you,” Dimitri breathes, when finally they stop for air. “These past few months have been sheer agony.”
Dedue strokes his thumb at the small of Dimitri’s neck, drawing a pleasant hum out of him. “I don’t regret coming here,” Dedue says, “but I questioned each and every day if there wasn’t any way to have you here with me, too.”
Dimitri smiles wearily. “I think the Lords Gautier-Fraldarius were ready to kidnap me themselves and drag me here, if only to get me to stop pining over you.”
Dedue laughs. Tugs at Dimitri’s lower lip with his thumb, teasing it down. Then kisses it, just that lower lip, draws it in between his own with a pleased sigh.
“Dedue,” Dimitri breathes.
Dedue can’t hide the smile in his voice as he cradles Dimitri against him. “Dima.”
“Please. Let me share my life with you.” Dimitri nestles into the crook of Dedue’s neck. “I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but . . .”
Dedue shushes him with a kiss against the hair matting to Dimitri’s forehead. “I must stay here until the referendum. But after that . . .”
Dimitri looks up at him with a frown. “But—you’re councilor. Whether they vote to stay with the kingdom or not, they’ll be looking to you for—”
“No. No matter the outcome . . . I never wished to lead permanently.” Dedue smoothes Dimitri’s hair back. “I only wished to see the work started.”
Dimitri’s expression lifts, and Dedue knows it too well—the swell of hope. He feels that same sensation billowing in his chest. “But then what will you do?”
Dedue kisses the tip of Dimitri’s nose. He can’t stop kissing him. This was why he always feared starting—now that he’s done it, there’s no way to stop, short of Dimitri’s own demand. But Dimitri’s gentle sigh each time makes abundantly clear that won’t be coming anytime soon.
He links their hands and brings them to his cheek, nuzzling against Dimitri’s skin once more. For years he has dreamed of this moment. Sometimes, in the darkness, his parents’ screams ringing in his ears, it was the only thing that ushered him to the dawn. Sometimes, as when he was lost for endless days to the fever of poisoned blood following his rescue, tossing and turning as Ruri and the others packed poultices onto his wounds, he believed it was real, had always been real—that they’d always been lovers, and their stiff formality was just a role they played for the outside world. In those fevered dreams, Dimitri came to him as a ghost, haunting him for his failure, for breaking his oath—Dedue convinced that because he’d lived after all, it meant Dimitri must have died.
Sometimes they caught him digging through his packs, searching for the last resort he’d carried with him since they first saw Cornelia’s army marching on Fhirdiad.
Sometimes he thought he’d found it, and they’d find him clenching a stone to his wounds, sobbing and shaking because it wouldn’t shatter, because it wouldn’t do what he was sure it would. Because he couldn’t become the monster he felt he was inside—the monster who, if he couldn’t protect his king, then at least could make his king’s killers pay in the most agonizing way.
He dreamed of claws and teeth and Dimitri’s murderers shredded apart. He dreamed of dying only as his body gave out, a cruel smile painting his gore-slick mouth as the stench of his carnage filled his last breath.
He dreamed of a blood-soaked crown dented upon the throne room floor. Sometimes they were in Enbarr; sometimes in Fhirdiad. Sometimes in Duscur, as hooded assassins stood over the smashed wreckage of the royal carriage, and stooped down to slit their victims’ throats.
Sometimes—sometimes—he dreamed of a crown of white roses in Dimitri’s hand. Those were the sweetest dreams of all, the dreams that made all the nightmares worth fighting through. Because if still he could dream of it, of petals showering down around them as the people of Faerghus and Duscur alike cheered, then it might not be lost to him just yet.
He’d dreamed of so many impossible things, but none so impossible and yet so simple and blissful as this: Dimitri, alive and warm, and nestled in his arms, something fragile that he could cradle, not something that needed to break.
“Whatever the people of Duscur choose,” Dedue says, selecting the words with all the care of a lover’s bouquet, “then we will respect that. First and foremost. If that means I remain here, then I will do so, but Fhirdiad is not so far away that we cannot meet like this.”
“I don’t want you for a secret, Dedue.” Dimitri looks up at him, and it sends a hairline fracture through Dedue’s heart. “I want the world to know what you mean to me.”
Dedue blinks back tears, heart so full he fears it might burst. “I could never hide you away. I only meant to give the people of Duscur space without feeling the breath of Faerghus down their necks.”
“If they choose independence,” Dimitri says, “they will have it. But I do hope the kingdom would still be allowed a diplomatic mission of some kind.” Dimitri smiles sadly. “That my presence would not be unwelcome for purely personal reasons.”
“No. I cannot imagine it would.” Dedue strokes his cheek with their joined hands. “And even if Duscur chooses independence, I don’t think it would be frowned upon if I were to reside in the castle from time to time . . . ?”
“Not by anyone who wants to keep their posting, no.” Dimitri curls his head beneath Dedue’s chin—the perfect height, the perfect place for him, as if their souls had been forged in the same fire by the goddess of heart-bonds, the goddess whose sigil graces the axe resting behind them. Dimitri hadn’t even known what that symbol meant when he brought it—only that it was the Molinaros’ mark. But they’d chose that mark for its unshatterable nature. For the bonds it swore for life.
“We are building a better world,” Dimitri says. “One where we can have space to love as we choose without it needing dictate the shape of either nation.”
Dedue nods, overwhelmed by it all. “I’m proud for the hand I’ve had in it. And I’ll be prouder still, after the referendum, to step away and leave it in others’ hands.”
“And if you’ll welcome me into your home, not as a king but as yours, yours alone, then I will do anything you ask. Anything.”
They turn to face the last gasp of sunset as the waves curl around it, a lover’s embrace. Dedue’s garden blooms below them, perfuming the twilight air. Arms entwined, hearts sealed together, breaths and thoughts a single soul’s.
“My love,” Dedue says softly, “you already have.”